In the article, a Washington University in St. Louis scientist and his colleagues describe what happened when pulses of atmospheric carbon dioxide and sulfate aerosols were intermixed at the end of the Ordovician geological period more than 440 million years ago.

The counterpart of the tumult in the skies was death in the seas. At a time when most of the planet north of the tropics was covered by an ocean and most complex multicellular organisms lived in the sea, 85 percent of marine animal species disappeared forever. The end Ordovician extinction, as this event was called, was one of the five largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Although the gases were injected into the atmosphere by massive volcanism rather than prodigious burning of fossil fuels and under circumstances that will never be exactly repeated, they provide a worrying case history that reveals the potential instability of planetary-scale climate dynamics.

Figuring out what caused the end Ordovician extinction or any of the other mass extinctions in Earth’s history is notoriously difficult, said David Fike, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and a co-author on the paper.

Because the ancient atmospheres and oceans have long since been altered beyond recognition, scientists have to work from proxies, such as variations in oxygen isotopes in ancient rock, to learn about climates long past. The trouble with most proxies, said Fike, who specializes in interpreting the chemical signatures of biological and geological activity in the rock record, is that most elements in rock participate in so many chemical reactions that a signal can often be interpreted in more than one way.

But a team led by David Jones, an earth scientist at Amherst College, was able to bypass this problem by measuring the abundance of mercury. Today, the primary sources of mercury are coal-burning power plants and other anthropocentric activities; during the Ordovician, however, the main source was volcanism.

Volcanism coincides with mass extinctions with suspicious frequency, Fike said. He is speaking not about an isolated volcano but rather about massive eruptions that covered thousands of square kilometers with thick lava flows, creating large igneous provinces (LIPs). The most famous U.S. example of a LIP is the Columbia River Basalt province, which covers most of the southeastern part of the state of Washington and extends to the Pacific and into Oregon.

About the Author

Diana Lutz is the senior news director for science in the Office of Public Affairs. She reports on the research, activities and accomplishments of faculty, students and staff in the natural sciences and math.

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